[This story from TriplePundit provides a clear, layperson’s explanation of the many ways virtual reality (and presence) can improve the design, engineering and manufacturing of products, along with the lives of those involved in these processes. –Matthew] [Image: Immersive virtual reality uses a 23-camera motion-capture system and head-mounted display to virtually immerse an employee in a future workstation. Credits: 1) Ford (for press use only); 2) Courtesy of author.] Inside Ford’s Virtual Reality Labs By Phil Covington on Friday, Jan 13th, 2017 These days the buzz in the auto industry is all about autonomous vehicles and the future of personal…

[This story from CNET makes clear the value of being ‘present’ in a museum via telepresence robot, with the second half providing the author’s impressions of the experience; see the original story for several more pictures. Google’s Arts & Culture resources provide a more limited but still presence-evoking experience of many cultural treasures (e.g., as a clock collector and enthusiast I’d like to visit the (U.S.) National Watch and Clock Museum in Columbia, Pennsylvania in person but I can ‘visit’ via Google. –Matthew] [Image: My virtual experience in the museum was comparable to my real-life visit. Photo by James Martin/CNET.]…

[This story from The New York Times provides an interesting look at the development and early-days potential of Google’s Tilt Brush technology and virtual art generally; see the original for more images and two videos. –Matthew] [Image: Roz Chast’s cartoon made with Tilt Brush. Credit: Google] The Making of Virtually Real Art With Google’s Tilt Brush By Frank Rose January 4, 2017 SAN FRANCISCO — In 1949, a Life magazine photographer named Gjon Mili made a pilgrimage to the French Riviera to see Pablo Picasso. Mili had come up with a way to photograph trails of light, and he wanted to…

[The installation described in this story from Alphr (where it includes more pictures and a 0:23 minute video) looks like an intriguing, and even important, presence project. –Matthew] Enter a psychedelic virtual forest in Treehugger: Wawona Open at the Southbank Centre today, Treehugger: Wawona combines VR and physical set design to create a virtual giant sequoia by Thomas McMullan Unless you happen to be 80 metres tall, have a circumference of 30 metres and have lived for 2,500 years, giant sequoias will make you feel small. These vast trees exist on the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada mountains in…

[I’ve often thought it’s amazing that we feel empathy for animated characters and stories; here’s a post from the (excellent) Kottke.org blog about the invention 80 years ago of the multiplane camera and how it helped enable this element of social presence. The original post includes a 7:20 minute video. –Matthew] [Image: Walt Disney, center, with Bob Gibeaut, left, head of the camera department, and Bob Broughton, in front of multiplane camera. Source: Los Angeles Times.] Disney’s multiplane camera, an innovation in illusion posted by Jason Kottke   Jan 05, 2017 In a short film shot in 1957, Walt Disney described…

[According to a recent Parks Associates marketing study, “more than 60% of U.S. broadband households claim to know little or nothing about virtual reality,” but “50% of consumers who try a VR headset enjoy it and make plans to purchase one, while 15% who try one enjoy the experience and then buy a headset.” So the Facebook pop-up ‘stores’ described in the story below from USA Today make sense. The original story includes a 0:27 minute video and more pictures, and coverage in The Denver Post has a list of the cities that are hosting the demos. –Matthew] [Image: Facebook’s…